Sanjeev Kohli: 7 on 7 - 2

Did it take you a while to find a voice?

Sanjeev: I've been writing comedy for ten, eleven years now. And I think I've probably only found a definite voice the latter half of that.

Whether you like or hate the stuff that I do, I'd like to think now that no one else could have written it. Whereas the first two or three years I think I spent just writing all my influences out till I found my own voice. To the extent that I actually wholesale nicked a sketch. I didn't know I'd done it until afterwards. I used to write for a sketch show called Chewing The Fat, and one of the sketches I wrote was called something like "Photocopying my arse with". "And today I'll be photocopying my arse with blah de blah de blah". And it was a full five years afterwards I was watching reruns of Fry and Laurie, and there was the sketch. It lodged in my brain and I somehow fooled myself into thinking oh that's my idea. It wasn't at all. It was Fry and Laurie.

It just shows that the first few years you do, you probably are just expending what's in your head already. I'm assuming everyone here is a comedy fan and probably have a style of comedy they like and you'll subconsciously ape it for ages before you get it out your system.

In a lot of ways your writing is just a reflection of who you are and what you like. I still find in my writing strong elements of Armando Iannucci, and Morecambe and Wise, and The Two Ronnies, and Kenny Everett, and the Young Ones. They'll all be there in small doses. A lot of Victoria Wood. If you can spread the influences so that no one can see them, then that's quite a good trick. And then try and add a bit of your own.

It's important to write about the truth that you know and to be confident that if you find it funny then it probably is funny.

Gareth: I think that's a really important part of comedy writing - you have to find what you're doing funny. And a lot of the time people make a sort of inventory of what's succeeded and try and copy it, thinking this isn't really my sort of thing but this seems to be the sort of thing they're looking for.

And the moment that you let go of your own taste and your own love of comedy to try and second guess somebody else, you've effectively thrown your comic compass out of the window. And there's absolutely no way you'll ever know whether your writing is going to make other people laugh or not if you're not just trusting your own instinct.

What are you trying to do with 7 on 7?

Gareth: We mentioned earlier Week Ending, and we're hoping to recreate that and set up a culture again in BBC radio where a lot of writers are coming to us. And the most crucial thing is that they're building up relationships with producers. Because without a producer who you're in a dialogue with you're never going to grow and find the opportunities to get your stuff on.

It may feel kind of uncomfortable or somehow cynical or selling out to try and network and build up these relationships. But actually that's the heart of the comedy industry, the relationship between the writer and the producer. And you all need to think how to get a dialogue going with a producer who finds the same things funny as you do.

The flip side of that is, if you find that you're sending your sketches to a producer who's going "I thought the font you used was nice" then just move on. There's no point desperately trying to sell your idea to somebody who's only showing a half-hearted interest. You need to target your work and keep looking until you've built up a relationship with someone who's sympathetic to your sense of humour. And that's going to be the bedrock of a comedy writing career.

And we're hoping by setting up this new topical show that we'll get more of those sorts of relationships forming. Of course with the internet that's a lot easier to do at a distance now. It used to be going to the fax machine or sending things back and forth by post. But now even if the producers are based in Glasgow or in London you're still in a really strong position to set up a proper dialogue with them. And that'll be the foundation of a comedy writing career.

Sanjeev: Just really to reinforce what Gareth said, a couple of years ago I got asked to be on the panel for judging a comedy master class. People were asked to send sketches in and the upshot of it was that I had to read twenty sketches. And if I were a producer I would happily have commissioned a sitcom from twelve or thirteen of those writers, and I knew within two or three minutes if there was obviously a talent. It was obvious they could do characters, it was obvious they could do dialogue.

So really do not underestimate the power of the sketch. It will get you noticed and it's good for you as well. You'll write stuff and it might well get picked up by a producer, but no word is wasted, especially now, cos it will still be in your hard drive. There's been times when a sketch show's come round and they say "Have you got any ideas?" And I've had an idea which I knew was really good but the producer at the time didn't get it. And I'll pull it out and I'll take all the Gary Glitter references out of it and update it and send it on cos I'm still confident that that sketch works, those characters work, the gag works. So nothing's wasted.

Gareth: The single most useful phrase that I've come across about writing is that a scene is what happens when two people want different things. And a lot of the time, sketch writing people especially fall into the trap of having two characters saying more or less the same thing.

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